Aware
by Xigbar
Summary: [Oneshot] On catching the meaning of small moments, and the chemistry between those who know life. SeiferSquall


_**a/n: **Ummm...YAY For my OTP! XD ...Somehow I don't see myself getting a lot of reviews...but...I wish you damn fangirls were patient enough to give my fics and ideas a try D': _

_Anyway, this ismy insane take on Seifer/Squall. Don't expect stereotypes. I cleared my head out completely and looked at the two of them with hard, clean logic. Then I stuck idealism to them and made my very own completely muddy position on this pairing. I think it's rather unique, and if not, at least a bit interesting._

_Disclaimer: I don't own 'em._

Aware  
Oneshot On catching the meaning of small moments, and the chemistry between those who know life. SeiferSquall

* * *

_Not because I've hurt you in more ways than one_

_Love can't explain the depth of my feelings for you._

--

Cold dread washed over Squall and he stared. Because his features were not practiced in the art of expression, he appeared as he usually would. Standing in the center of the warm-colored room, he was a picture of stoic hilarity.

"Squall," came a voice from the doorway.

Once again, his droopy eyes ran over the two scribbled lines of poetry on the napkin clutched loosely in his hand.

Seifer was neither surprised by nor put off by the fact that there was no reply. The lofty blonde stopped, equally as awkward in posture, beside the small couch. Squall was staring at a napkin.

"Are you using that?" Seifer joked obscurely, already unhappy with Squall's apparent moodiness.

Sullenly, Squall looked at the taller man.

"A poem..."

Seifer blinked where he stood and scratched his brow, scattering the short hairs unattractively.

"Um," he said.

"Since when are you a poet?" Squall pressed.

And Seifer defended. "I'm not."

Squall raised his arm and the napkin with it, pointedly glancing at the blonde. Green eyes regarded the napkin and Squall could see the recognition in his face.

"Then what is this?"

And Squall could hear the obnoxious sound of poorly-greased cogs turning in Seifer's mind.

"I'm won't tell you," Seifer replied, nail of his thumb once again tending to the persistent itch on his face. The harmony of his brow was disrupted further.

Squall glanced down at the napkin-poetry again, as if suspecting he'd missed something the first time he'd looked.

"There a problem?"

"I guess so," Squall said, not consciously aware of the thoughtful frown wrinkling the skin above his nose. "...I don't believe you wrote this yourself..."

There was an extended moment of silence, lingering heavily in the air.

"Well, no; I didn't." The serious look on Seifer's face was all Squall needed to see to know that the blonde man's impending prank / joke had been cut short.

"Fine," Squall sighed, having had lost the will to really care, as he now knew the horrendous piece of work hadn't come from Seifer.

"Rinoa told me to be romantic," Seifer added, striding over with yawn and plucking the unwanted piece of napkin away from the brunet. He still looked a bit ruffled from a training session, Squall noticed, as the man looked down at him. "Thought I should try a new approach; she wrote this as an example."

"You listened to her?" Squall wondered, disinterested.

"I don't need anyone's advice, especially not a girl's..." Seifer trailed off as he glanced down at the napkin. He seemed equally as put off by the poem as Squall had been, and spoke again distinctly: "...hell!"

Squall let out a short, heavy breath. It could have been interpreted as a chuckle.

"No, it's definitely too romantic for you..."

Green eyes went up and watched Squall solemnly, as if something delicate had been tugged from far in Seifer's memory.

"Too romantic..." Seifer echoed. "No, it's just too cheesy."

As if just noticing Seifer's close proximity for the first time, Squall blinked dazedly at him.

"Uh." The brunet mumbled his response. He wasn't sure how Seifer had intended his words to be taken, so he left them safely uninterpreted.

Seifer glanced at him. "Uh?"

"Um."

This sort of uncomfortable exchange was typical. As it would happen, they'd quickly run themselves dry of things to say.

Seifer's hand shifted around the wrinkled napkin so he could continue to inspect it, and he wondered if Squall really couldn't tell the difference between his and Rinoa's handwriting.

Squall watched him, wondering how in the world a man could be so crude and transparent.

They were silent for a long while, until Seifer felt the brunet's cool fingers close to his face. His eyes snapped to attention and he lifted his head to stare at Squall. As if the other man had lost it.

"What are you doing?" It was very unusual for them to touch out of the privacy of the bedroom, even this much.

Squall's lip quirked into a pensive, tight-lipped expression: not even a full smile. He braved further to hold the man's cheek in his hand, and by the time his thumb had bent up and touched the corner of Seifer's brow, the blonde was completely tense.

"What are you doing?" Seifer repeated, fully aware that Squall had heard him the first time. Squall blinked at him tolerantly.

"If you would stop fidgeting for a moment," The smaller man requested, tone holding a distinctly false pleasantness.

Seifer did, and Squall dragged his thumb across a blonde eyebrow, smoothing the earlier-misplaced hairs back into its original shape. Squall pulled his hand back with no change in expression, but Seifer got the impression that the brunet was satisfied with his deed. Not particularly missing the lost contact, Seifer rubbed his neck and lifted the brow that Squall had so obessive-compulsively set back to form.

Squall cleared his throat as if to dismiss the issue.

"Brain out of commision today?" Seifer asked uncuriously.

"Your eyebrow needed to be fixed, so I fixed it," was the equable reply.

"Enchanting." Seifer's hand twitched, remembering the napkin in his grasp. "You do realize that I'm not the one who wrote--"

"Your _eyebrow_," Squall corrected him quickly.

(Squall had seen disorder in the form of an eyebrow, so he'd fixed it. Seifer had mistaken it as a gesture brought on from poetry. Seifer had voiced his malcontent and, dammit, Squall just didn't want to talk about poems. The discussion was over. End of story.)

A keen look crossed Seifer's face, making Squall feel disjointed. They could be a noisy and backbiting twosome, but, as a 'couple,' they shared few words. The expression on Seifer's face both amused Squall and discomfited him; there was something very sincere about it.

Seifer looked away, knowing the effect of his stare on Squall. He didn't strive to be an insincere person; he only suspected his 'real' self was too simple and lacking the intrigue to keep the interest of the complex man he called his rival. Seifer had built layers of infuriating and unreasonable personality, if they would just glow enough to distract Squall from seeing how 'unremarkable' he really was.

Moments of 'sincerity' were moments in which Seifer realized how different he and Squall were, in that respect especially. He slipped up, and his simplicity shone through.

Squall, however, had always known Seifer was a simple man. It was obvious in everything he did, mostly in the way he hid his insecurities behind aggression or indifference. Far be it from Squall to recognize the same trait in himself.

"Squall," Seifer warned.

"Look, I don't want poetry." Squall was short in sentence and had always been very blunt. It seemed he still had some things to make clear.

He also could have been degrading Seifer (neither man would ever know,) but the blonde took it well into the comfortable silence. They might have finally acheived unity after all the years of missing one another by mere millimetres.

Seifer eyed him mildly, mind racing in a lap of emotions he didn't care to identify.

"That's demanding of you."

The brunet only shrugged. His fingers were still cool, Seifer noticed, as Squall took the man's larger hand up against his and pressed their hands together with neither apprehension nor determination on his face.

Touch, as a physical sense, only served to let people know when something was there; that there was warmth. They didn't need their lips to tell them so, and the fact that theyconnected through their palms rather than by mouth always made these moments very intimate.

In one like this, there was no misunderstanding. They were never rivals, nor lovers, and certainly not strangers. Each was only an awareness, sensing through the warmth of the physical world that the other was still there; still with him.

They were energy, they complemented each other; extending in different directions, they crossed.

"Whatever..."

Had Squall smiled, it wouldn't have meant much to Seifer. Had sincerity shone in Seifer's guarded green eyes, it wouldn't have meant a thing to Squall. What were these things, after all, but more of the same physical possibilities in a never-ending sequence?

To each other, only when trapping a piece of that tragically finite consciousness between their hands were words not needed to show that they were still there. Written through the matching scars between their brows, it was dark and inescapable; it was simple, illogical, and meaningful.

They fit.

* * *

a/n: Simple concept, basically this: they're awkward, they seem wrong for one another, but they're right. Sorry if the dialogue seems somewhat flat; I assure you, that was entirely intentional. To me, a slightly unclear, slightly choppy, untheatrical conversation is _real_. It's meant to leave you feeling like you aren't fully thrilled by their world / understand their chemistry. 

Besides, these two don't strike me as being an exaggerated anything (except for gunblade-fighting..) when they're together. When I think Seifer/Squall, I think: _cold, warm, straightforward_, and _obscure_. I don't mean that they're opposites. I can easily put those four words to either one of them respectively.

Mostly, I see such a vast and incomprehensible complexity in their chemistry that it could only be very accurately described as simplicity. Then again...that's just me. (did you notice this fic lacks unity? My English teacher would bite me.)

The soul may live on, and the body will continue to circulate in the planet...but that fleeting thing we call awareness is the only clear evidence that here, and now, there is life.

I'm such an idealist. XD


End file.
